


to be alone with you

by kashxy



Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Inspired by Call Me By Your Name, M/M, Peter's Barely Legal, Pining, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, Summer Romance, Third POV, Unreliable Narrator, age gap, alternative universe, possible underage
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:07:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22104571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kashxy/pseuds/kashxy
Summary: We arrived two hours early, damp hair sticking to sweaty skin underneath the sweltering Italian sun. His arm was thrown up, shielding his eyes to navigate further into the mountain range. It would have been easy for him to murder me, I remember thinking. He hadn't. He'd turned, in that infuriatingly sleek way of his, and held out a hand softly littered in callouses, and simply said; "Shall we?"orIt's 1983, somewhere in Northern Italy.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Aunt May, Peter Parker & Uncle Ben, Peter Parker/Quentin Beck
Kudos: 22





	to be alone with you

"Bonjour!" That voice, his attitude, the accent.

They weren't French, neither he nor Quentin. Yet, he'd somehow managed to slip another culture into their perfectly crafted Italian house like the four walls enclosing it meant nothing more than temporary accommodation to him.

Peter watches the way he moves, the way he holds his very shoulders, set in a position as easy as lounging in the summer garden came to him. Aunt May greets him not like she greets anyone else - she throws her arms around him, doesn't poke at the toe of his shoes that still reside on his feet inside the living room, and starts chattering before the bird in the corner of the room can tweet the new arrival of an unfamiliar stranger.

That's what he is, Peter reminds himself. He's no reason to be kind, yet the glare his Aunt shoots his way makes him doubt that declaration. He takes a deep breath, lets it travel through his throat, settle in his lungs. The air still feels clean, as clean as he knows it with cigarettes pointed towards him in all different directions. Quentin hasn't ruined the air, nor has he ruined the perfectly cream rug aside the table.

"I'm Peter," he says, hand extended towards the older man. He takes it without a second thought, and his grip is strong, tight, the kind of grip he's only felt once before. When he releases it, his own hand feels small in comparison to the emptiness. "My room?"

May nods, blowing smoke past his face. He’s used to the contamination in the air, to the act of dying an early death for a hobby as simple as inhaling and exhaling. He’s been used to it for such a long time that he doesn’t wonder why her habit had rubbed off on him. Ben joins her, an arm circling her shoulders, and Peter knows it's not just an act.

He takes Quentin's bags as the older man lets him, never mind the stark difference he's beginning to see more now that they're closer. Quentin is bigger, stronger, older, carved like a Greek God, but he holds his body in a way not unlike the way Peter’s seen the women in the village handle clothing.

He hasn’t said much to Peter since he first arrived, but then again, not many of their summer guests do. 

Aunt May and Uncle Ben open their home and their arms to stowaway kids looking for somewhere to stay for the summer, a tradition that started a few years after Peter’s tenth birthday. They’re usually odd kids with backstories of literature chasing or wealthy dreams, so Peter doesn’t mind too much about them. For six weeks, every summer, he opens his bedroom to strangers, and he settles into the noticeably smaller room attached, the one that belonged to his grandfather before he died. He might as well pretend to put up with the constant, lingering presence of someone he’ll get to know so well who will inevitably leave. 

“This is my room, but I guess it’s yours now.” He mumbles, placing the suitcases on the floor beside the closet. He’d had only enough time to quickly throw a few clothes into the basket and hurriedly makes the bed, but Quentin didn’t seem to mind. 

By the time Peter had turned to remind him of the fact that they shared a bathroom, the older man was softly snoring on his stomach, shoes still on, blue shirt all billowy and tucked in to his light washed jeans. It didn’t look comfy, but Peter wasn’t about to wake him.

His grandfathers’ old room is small, but it’s the only room with a direct view to the lake across the gardens, so he doesn’t mind too much. It has a desk, a bed, an area to store his clothes. In ways he can’t really understand yet, it’s more homely than the one Quentin has overtaken. 

Summer in Northern Italy is as quiet as it sounds. Not many people his age run the streets here, and if they do, Peter doesn’t get his hands dirty with them. He prefers the tranquility of being alone, never lonely but always without company. The few friends he does have feel the same, so they often are together, but apart. 

In Northern Italy in the summertime, people wait for it to end just so they can resume livelihoods. Peter uses the time to write, to fill journals with words and music notes alike. Music changes summer in a way the whole town knows, as it affects almost everything, from the streets bordering the small clubs in the outskirts of Crema to the midsummer ball they hold in the town square just a little North of the house. 

Piano is his speciality, the one thing that makes this house seem a little less large in his opinion. The keys are like second nature to him, like a double pair of fingers growing from his hand just made to dance across and play tunes he’d created alone. In his loneliness comes his most emotional work, the work he’s most proud of. Nobody has ever heard those notes played aloud but him and the four walls of the foyer. 

Getting caught up in work isn’t hard, but losing track of time seems to be coming easier and easier to him now. Time slips from his grasp before he can mumble the words _stop_ , and the bell is ringing for a late afternoon dinner before he’s out his pencil down once. Pages upon pages are littered in what looks like gibberish but may as well be the autobiography of his life’s creations. 

The only exit besides the window is the bathroom he and Quentin share, and he can’t help but wonder whether the older man would have taken it upon himself to follow the sound of the bell ringing. He would have been sleeping for multiple hours now, and Peter’s met enough jet lagged strangers to know how difficult it is to adjust the body clock when you incorporate naps.

Quentin hasn’t moved an inch, and he’s still snoring softly, his mouth open and squished into the pillow. He looks quiet, a kind of quiet none of the other guests seemed to be familiar with. They’d been hectic, plagued by their own traumas in a way Peter often sympathised with. He’s not sure they’d ever recover from such a damaging childhood. 

The bell rings again, and Quentin moves with a groan. He may be a guest, but rules hold upright - the second dinner bell is final, and no one is exempt from that. 

He could lean over and gently poke the older man awake, or whisper his name in his ear and coax him from sleep. Instead, he chooses a small book from the bookshelf next to the bed, a tattered cover of _The Piano Teacher_ , and drops it loudly onto the hardwood floor. 

Quentin wakes violently, and Peter watches him in awe, studying the way his arms move straight to steady his body, the way his knee pulls in to his body. 

He turns, mouth slightly open with half closed eyes, and Peter paints an expression of the same shock Quentin wears into his own face, stuttering with his hands like the book had magically flown on its own accord. 

“Oh, I-” he trails off, doubting that Quentin believes him for a second. “Dinner’s ready. You need to come down.” 

Quentin mumbles something under his breath, rubbing at his eyes with those large hands of his. The little stubble covering his chin and jawline looks unkempt, the pretty dishevelled look of someone naturally attractive. Peter looks away, and opens his bedroom door. Quentin can dress in peace. 

He meets him outside the door, still in that same billowy blue shirt as before, but paired now with grey sweatpants and white socks with a little yellow hem on them. He looks tired, but awake, and he greets Peter as though they’ve known each other for years.

“You have dinner quite early,” he comments as they pass a window, the gentle light of a late midsummer afternoon casting shadows on the bridge of his nose. “You must do things a lot different in Italy.” 

“Not that different.” Peter answers, greeting the maid as they pass her in the pantry. Quentin gives her nothing more than a curt nod and a smile, but it dazzles through his lips and towards his eyes. The crinkles around his temple are genuine, and Peter watches his back as he passes through the doorway. 

“Buon pomeriggio, Quentin!” Aunt May greets him with a kiss on either side of his cheek, her hands waving so fantastically that the cigarette between her right index finger and middle finger is flickering dangerously close to the butt. “Have you recovered from your trip?” 

“I have, thank you,” Quentin answers, and settles down into one of the garden chairs. The maid, Sofia, fills the glass with juice before he can ask, and Peter sits across from him, filling his own. “Is this juice from the apricots in the garden?” 

Ben nods, and Peter watches the way Quentin’s eyes move, the genuine shock on his face ricocheting throughout the table. He’s a nice guy, nicer than any of the guests he’s met so far, but he seems so dazzled by the wonder of different cuisines that Peter wonders where, and how, he grew up.

The glass table holds small bowls of pasta and salad and fruit, food to calm the anxiety. Quentin is already spooning out leafy greens to decorate the pasta in his bowl, though Peter settles for a small bowl of mango slices. 

“Shall I show him ‘round the town?” Peter asks around a mouthful of mango. The town is gentle at night, but dazzling in the daytime - it’ll be much more worthwhile taking Quentin tomorrow. 

“That would be lovely,” Quentin interjects before either Ben or May can answer. “Thank you.” 

“I can take you to Porta Ombriano before lunch, if you’d like. It’s easy enough to remember the way.”

“Sounds perfect.” Quentin says with a smile, popping a small grape into his mouth. Their first dinner is always small, something light to settle the stomach of a queasy, travel sick foreigner, and tonight is no different. 

Grapes, small, circular pancakes, glasses of apricot juice and sliced apples, food that makes Peter’s head spin in a way that he can only relate to the tranquility of being in Northern Italy in the mid-eighties. He loves their home, and everything in it. 

—

Mornings in Italy start late, or perhaps early, but never in a place of hurry. Perhaps Peter’s been in a sheltered bubble of luxury his whole life, but he’s never seen the hectic flurry that Quentin seems to be most comfortable in. 

He brushes his teeth before breakfast, barely dropping by the kitchen to grab an apple before he’s back in his room, attempting to catch lost minutes of sleep while the fruit lays dormant on the bedside table. Peter doesn’t have the heart to tell him that nobody misses out on breakfast.

“Morning,” he calls, his voice echoing off the beige tile walls of the bathroom. “Are we still for Porta Ombriano today?” 

“You remember.” Peter says, half shocked, as he enters Quentin’s room. The older man is lying upon the bed with one leg propped on the other, an arm thrown above his head, his torso bare.   
  
“I remember.” He repeats. 

It’s not like they’ve never had male guests before, they’ve just never had male guests that look like Quentin. There’s something enticingly tranquillising about him and the way his body is, something that Peter’s never really seen before. 

The bell rings for breakfast before Peter can say anything, and he leaves the room without checking to see if Quentin is following. 

The stairs are cool against his bare feet, a grounding sensation that helps him forget the presence of an older man’s breath on the back of his neck. It makes him shiver, not the cool, but the breath, the fact that he’s following so close he could reach out and touch him if he so wanted to. 

There’s a certain warmth that fills Italy in the summer, that drapes it like a cloak in the morning and makes frosty hazes a forgotten memory. He wonders if Quentin has ever awoken to heat like this, to warmth that makes you feel it’s peaceful as this. 

Sofia passes him with a plate of tiny muffins, and Peter greets her as he always does; with a gentle smile and a tiny nose scrunch. She does the same, always in a rush, but he winks at her and follows as she hurries through the open glass doors. 

May and Ben are reclining on garden chairs on the porch, his Aunt with a cigarette in her mouth, his Uncle reading a copy of some book Peter swears is older than himself.

“Morning, tesoro.” May greets, her gaze tipped lazily to the sun. Her sunglasses mask half of her face, though it doesn’t make it impossible to see the way her eyes light up when Quentin steps out onto the porch. 

“Good morning.” He greets. 

“Morning, Quentin.” May and Ben say in unison, at least sparing him a little glance. Peter rolls his eyes, half playfully, and grabs a muffin from the plate Sofia had just set down. 

“Are you two still off to Porta Ombriano today?”   
  
Peter hums and watches Quentin follow his lead in grabbing a muffin. Neither of them sit, and he wonders whether he feels as out of place as Peter would have expected. 

“You can go ahead. No need to stay for breakfast.” 

Peter nods, a little shocked at the way Quentin’s affecting every one of them. He’s changing the way they live their very lives, and he’s been present in them for two days at most. 

“Are the bikes ready?” 

Ben nods, waving them off with his left hand in a way that prompts Peter to grab the pair of shoes he keeps outside on the porch. As he slips them on, he watches Quentin walk across the grass towards the stony wall, in which the two bikes sit dormant against. 

“We’ll be back by lunch.” He says, giving May a quick kiss on her cheek before half jogging to keep up with Quentin’s long strides. He can hear Ben and May talking behind him, but he focuses on the way Quentin’s baby yellow shorts look against his already tan skin, the way the light blue shirt he wears falls at his hips. 

Peter had never really cared for skin, had never really noticed the way it could cream into material in a way like this. The shirt sits upon Quentin’s skin like it doesn’t deserve to be there, like the washboard likeness of his stomach should be bared for all to see. 

In some inexplicable, selfish way, Peter hopes the only one who sees him in that vulnerable way is him. 

“So,” Quentin smiles and swings a leg over the bike that belongs to his Uncle. The shorts strain against his thigh in a way that makes Peter’s brain jumpstart. “Porta Ombriano?”


End file.
